Donald Trump’s ’60 Minutes’ Interview Drew Half As Many Viewers As Stormy Daniels’ Appearance
President Donald Trump’s interview on 60 Minutes this past weekend was viewed by about half as many people watching the program compared to when adult film actress and director Stormy Daniels appeared on it back in March.
Trump made comments earlier on Tuesday lamenting his as-for-now judicial win over Daniels, who had attempted to file a defamation case against the president. A judge in Texas dismissed that defamation suit, and suggested Trump was entitled to legal fees reimbursement from Daniels. Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, announced he and his client plan to appeal the decision by the judge, calling the ruling “limited,” according to reporting from Politico.
Still, it didn’t take long for Trump to gloat about the win on Twitter, as CBS News reported he even decided to give her a demeaning nickname.
“Great, now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer in the Great State of Texas,” Trump wrote.
But the president, who often obsesses over television ratings as reporting from Hollywood Reporter noted last year, may want to hold back on the bragging for the time being.
Ratings numbers from this weekend’s broadcast suggest that around 11.7 million viewers watched the president’s interview with 60 Minutes host Lesley Stahl. During that interview, Trump touched upon a number of subjects, according to previous reporting from the Inquisitr.
But the interview from March featuring Daniels amassed 22.1 million viewers, The Hill reported, meaning that Daniels’ broadcast was watched by almost twice the number of people who tuned in to watch Trump this past weekend.
Trump calls Stormy Daniels “Horseface” https://t.co/qF20MfguoV pic.twitter.com/KCnjMMK6QJ
— The Hill (@thehill) October 16, 2018
The Daniels interview in the spring centered around an alleged affair she said she and Trump engaged in with each other back in 2006. Ten years after the affair ended, while Trump was running for president, Daniels said his lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, offered her $130,000 in hush money in order to keep the story out of the media. Daniels agreed to the deal.
In August, Cohen pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws. He admitted to making the payment to Daniels, doing so in hopes that her silence could help Trump’s electoral chances (such payments are required to be disclosed to the Federal Elections Commission). Cohen also said in his plea statement that Trump directed him to make the payment to Daniels.
Trump denied ever asking Cohen to make the payment, and suggested after the plea deal was made that because the money came from outside his campaign funds, it wasn’t in violation of campaign rules.
“My first question when I heard about it was, ‘did they come out of the campaign?’ Because that could be a little dicey. But they didn’t come out of the campaign and that’s big,” he said, according to additional reporting from The Hill.
